"HEIRLOOMS"

My birthday is coming up. I'm getting well into my 60's now. Given all this I've been thinking things over. I've been wondering, where is everybody? Where is my family, my old friends, my school, my dog, my bike?

Where is that world that seemed so big, and complicated, and important. That lost world of dinners, homework, chores, math tests. That time, and place where I got in, and out of all sorts of trouble.

All those birthdays, trips to aunts, and uncles houses. The Christmas's, Thanksgiving's, July 4th bar-b-ques. Was all that a dream? Can whole worlds vanish without trace? The Universe blunders on as if we never were. That world I knew, and lived in has become as smoke in the wind. Curling, drifting, vanishing.

Maybe that's why heirlooms are so important to people. Those little scraps from a family's past. Old snap shots, a battered doll, a music box that doesn't work. These simple tattered things that speak for our past. Speak for all those now gone.

They say to Eternity, these little gems, they say,..."We lived, we were here! We loved, worked, suffered, laughed, learned, and died."

I've recently passed on to my oldest niece my Great Grandmothers music box. It's a simple pewter bowl. The top is a powder puff box, and the bottom is a music box. It's cover was the best part. It's beautifully engraved in the "art nouveau" style with a painted cameo of a lovely young girl in the center.

I used to play it all the time when I was little. Till I broke it, and my Mom had to send it to a jewelers to be fixed. You see before air conditioning people used to powder themselves lightly to stay cool, and prevent rash. I recall being powdered by my grandma, and ma in all my seen, and unseen places from that box.

I felt the time had come to pass this particular gem on. So when Kimberly came out east for a visit I gave it to her. I told her that it had been in our family for a hundred years. My Great Grandmother, her Great Great Grandmother got it as a birthday present from her father in 1915.

Great Grandmother whom we remember as "Grannie" gave it to my Grandmother, Violet, in the 1930's. Grandma Violet gave it to my mother Carmen when she was married in 1948. My Mom gave it to me shortly before she passed away in 1988. In time I gave it to my dear niece Kimberly, and told her to keep it in the family for another hundred years.

Btw, I suggested she only pass it down to the female line of the family as they are generally more sensible, and are less likely to sell it on "eBay" or it's successor business.

"Another hundred years", that's what I told her, and that's what's going to happen. I gave her the music box, and all the stories that surround it for her to pass on into this not so new century.

Amen.